CS Fullerton Drops Football for ’93 Season

The bubble that Cal State Fullerton’s Division I-A football program has been floating on the past two years finally burst Monday when school President Milton Gordon announced that the sport would be dropped.

But Gordon, who made his decision after reviewing the athletic department’s budget and measuring campus and community support for football, said the school intends to restore the program at the less-expensive Division I-AA level in 1994.

“We tried hard to raise sufficient funds to play I-A football but have not been successful,” Gordon said. “All the state budget cuts haven’t made it easier, but you can’t avoid reality. This decision is in the best interest of the university.”

Among the benefits of the move:

* Current players can transfer to another school without losing a year of eligibility. Had Fullerton downgraded to I-AA football for 1993, players wishing to transfer to I-A programs would have had to sit out a year before becoming eligible.

“I think a majority of them will be happy,” said Gene Murphy, who retired after this season, his 13th as Titan coach.

* The school can wait until next fall to hire a new coach, who can take his time assembling a staff and spend the 1993 season evaluating high school and community college players and scouting the new I-AA Western Football Conference, which Fullerton would join in 1994.

The Titans, a severely underfunded Division I-A team that has struggled to a 5-29 record the past three seasons, should be much more competitive in the new conference, which will include such schools as Cal State Northridge, Sacramento State, UC Davis and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

“The Western Football Conference offers an exciting opportunity for some real rivalries in the state,” Gordon said. “I’d like to use 1993-94 as a rebuilding year.”

* The athletic department can trim its projected budget deficit from about $350,000 to $60,000 this year, with almost all of the savings coming in coaching salaries.

By the end of the 1993-94 school year, Athletic Director Bill Shumard projects the department will have a surplus of about $13,000 without football, which accounted for $1.2 million of the school’s $4.9-million athletic budget.

“This has been a cloud of apprehension since I came here,” said Shumard, who was hired in August, 1991. “We know our direction, we can plan for it and there’s a commitment to it. That’s exciting.”

But how firm is that commitment to football in 1994? That’s difficult to determine.

Shumard said the athletic department will need an additional $250,000 a year to play I-AA football in the Western Football Conference, where teams will be limited to four coaches and 12 scholarships (Division I programs are allowed nine coaches and 92 scholarships). But neither Gordon nor Shumard could say where those funds would come from.

A $5-million capital campaign to benefit the athletic department and the Titan Sports Complex, launched in 1991 when Gordon decided to retain football despite an Athletics Council recommendation to drop it, has netted only $1.5 million in pledges, and about $800,000 of that has already been spent on 1991-92 operating expenses.

And all indications point toward the state budget situation getting worse--not better--next year.

“There’s always a possibility (that football won’t be brought back) but we’ll have better knowledge of the 1993-94 budget before we begin a course of action,” Gordon said. “It’s my intention to start recruiting a new coach next summer and return in 1994.”

Added Shumard: “We plan to look at additional resource possibilities.”

In contrast to the situation in the winter of 1991, when Gordon went out on a limb by ignoring recommendations by the Athletics Council and the Academic Senate to drop football, administrators appeared to be on the same page with this decision.

The eight-member Athletics Council spent November evaluating the football issue, garnering input from Titan coaches and athletic department personnel, students, faculty members, boosters and city officials, who invested heavily in the school’s new on-campus stadium.

The council adopted, by a vote of 6 to 2, a motion to recommend that I-A football be discontinued but then restored at the I-AA, cost-containment level when:

* The football program could be sustained while maintaining the overall quality of the school’s other sports.

* The financial state of the athletic department budget has been stabilized.

* Fund raising among student and community support groups is sufficient to provide a consistent financial base.

* The program fits into the athletic department’s prevailing gender equity plan.

“This is a better alternative than the complete abolishment of the program,” Murphy said. “The president saved us one time, and I guess he saved us again. Hopefully by 1994 we’ll garner the financial support for football. This could have been real bad news, but it’s good news. Hopefully I’ll be able to say that in a year.”

There wasn’t nearly the fervor to save football this year as there was two years ago, when construction of the on-campus stadium that Murphy had sought for so long was nearing completion.

Two Titan Athletic Foundation members pledged $25,000 each at a meeting with Gordon in 1991, and several boosters made impassioned pleas on Murphy’s behalf to save football.

But with Murphy announcing his retirement Oct. 1, marginal attendance in the Titan Sports Complex last football season, growing financial problems and minimal community support--only 60 or so, including a handful of students, attended two recent open forums to discuss the program--there was no strong sentiment to keep football.

“Fifty-one years ago there was a surprise in Hawaii,” Murphy said, alluding to Pearl Harbor Day. “This was not a surprise to me. From a financial standpoint, it’s impossible to have I-A football without emasculating the other programs. Whether I was here or not, it’s a matter of dollars and cents.”

In 1991, Gordon made a two-year commitment to I-A football but that did little to boost the program. The football team, which had a 107-150-3 record from 1970 through 1992, was still hit with severe budget cuts, and perceived instability in the program made recruiting difficult.

The team suffered on and off the field. Earlier this season, players threatened to boycott a game until they were assured their scholarships would be honored regardless of what happened to the program.

“There’s a sense of relief because it’s all over with,” Titan junior quarterback Trendell Williams said. “It’s been a hard season with too many distractions. But this decision is better for some of the underclassmen, because some guys have two years (of eligibility) left and can transfer somewhere where they’re treated right.”

Fullerton is the second Big West Conference school in the past year to drop football, following Cal State Long Beach’s move last winter. Several NCAA schools, including Drake and West Texas State in recent years, have suspended their football programs and restored them the following year.

The Big West was prepared for Fullerton’s move--it had made two 1993 master schedules, one with the Titans and one without--and with Arkansas State, Louisiana Tech, Northern Illinois and Southwestern Louisiana joining the conference next season in football only, the Big West will still have 10 football-playing schools.

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